I'm very new to this stuff - hopefully there are smart people out there who could answer my query (in words of 1 syllable please !!)

I recently got a 2nd user 'Lampucera' DAC - fully built. This is the smaller one with the CS8416 receiver/CS4397 DAC chip. I followed some DIY instructions on tapping the analogue signal off the PCB to go straight to a tube buffer (Yaqin). The prob is that I removed the 4 small caps next to the DAC chip - C27, C28, C30 and C31. Once I had removed these caps, I have found it impossible to find any soldering points to attach my output wires.

I don't have an OP-AMP in place at the moment - so questions are :

- how do I solder the 4 wires on ?? Is there anywhere else I can get the signal from ??

- I don't have an OPAMP so I presume an OPAMP would not work anyway now as those 4 caps were removed ??

- I have the seperate PSU board as well with the umbilical cord. Does this connect direcly to mains power or is any kind of additional transformer needed ??

The solder pads where the caps were are the connecting points. If you have destroyed them removing the caps you will have to get creative. You can go directly to the chip pins if you're really good at soldering.
The PS has to have a transformer, sounds like you are in over your head. No offense meant.

Thanks so much Bill. The reason I am on this forum is so I can learn from really smart people like yourself. I feel humbled that you could bother even responding to me at all. Hopefully my English irony is 'not over your head' !

I dont know the unit, but apart from soldering to the pins, are there any traces leading to the caps you killed? you could use a scalpel blade or similar and scrape the protective coat over the PCB trace off and expose the copper that way.

Thanks so much Bill. The reason I am on this forum is so I can learn from really smart people like yourself. I feel humbled that you could bother even responding to me at all. Hopefully my English irony is 'not over your head' !

I'm not smart, I'm old and jaded.

At the point you are at it cant hurt to try anything you can think of.

If nothing works, get one of the big dac boards with the 4398, they are much easier to mod. You can go back to the 4397 with a plug in, but the 4398s are superior.